This article briefly explores the many ways in which the George W. Bush administration's response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 do not conform to the predictions of the rational actor model. The article suggests that foreign policy decision-making models which focus on the behaviour of organisations and on bureaucratic politics provide far more satisfactory explanations for such matters as the failure to anticipate the attacks, the decision to attack Iraq, the exclusion of certain major actors from the policy making process and the failure to anticipate the difficulties which would follow on the invasion of Iraq.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 10 (2008) Issue (Month): 2 (January) Pages: 197-206 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF